Shady Miami Beach PAC attacks candidate Mark Weithorn

The shady Miami Beach PAC that has collected more than $1.3 million in donations from contractors, vendors and developers with interests in the city has mailed an attack mailer aimed at candidate Mark Weithorn, husband of Commissioner Deede Weithorn, the termed-out eleccted who is the first person that rose questions about obvious conflict of interest when Mayor Philip Levine and Commissioner Jonah “Shakedown” Wolfson are soliciting those $100,000 checks.

The large mail piece says Mark Weithorn “can’t be trusted” and lists a smattering of kitchen cabinet political sins: court judgments, failing to include debt on his financial disclosure when he ran for state rep in 2012 and taking a trip to Europe paid by taxpayers.

Nevermind that the first two are yawners. Technical legal stuff that might thrill or disgust Ladra and insiders is something most voters are apparently disinterested in. The last one is a blatant lie, Weithorn said. He has gone to Art Basel with his wife on more than one occasion, but always paid his own way, he said. “I’m the only one who always picks up the tab for food because I don’t want anyone saying later that I took anything from anybody.

“And it’s really disgusting that Jonah Wolfson is bashing leaders of Miami Beach for going to Art Basel,” Weithorn added. “We have a tourism based economy that subsidizes 40% of our budget and Art Basel is a big part of that. We have to take care of it.”

Weithorn, who is running in an open seat, faces businessman Ricky Arriola, who is the mayor’s choice for the position — which means Wolfson’s choice — and would have been appointed to fill the void if Commissioner Ed Tobin had become a cop earlier this year. Now that Levine has a challenger in attorney David Wieder, Mark Weithorn will be the shady PAC’s No. 2 target. And he knows it. He will now always bee their first.

“I’m flattered,” he told Ladra Tuesday morning, a day after the piece landed in voter’s mailboxes. His main concern, in fact, wasn’t with the content.

“That picture makes me look fat. I’m going on a diet, throwing out the Haagen Dazs ice cream,” Weithorn said.

Regarding the other stuff? Weithorn admits he’s not perfect. “I’ve taken care of most of that stuff,” he said about the judgments. “I had some problems during the recession. I’m dealing with it over time, which is what you do.”

He says he paid the $3,000 fine to the Florida Elections Commission for failing to disclose his debts in 2012 because “I filled out a form incorrectly and even after I corrected it, the state still wanted to get paid.”

Like Ladra, Weithorn believes the shady Relentless PAC will backfire on Levine and Wolfson, both of whom have been shaking down vendors and developers for contributions, come November. The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust is investigating whether the donations have any promise of quid pro quo. Like other candidates who have been knocking on doors, he says the general population doesn’t like the stench of what they’ve seen in the news, on the blogs and in the very public fight between Wolfson and veteran TV journalist Michael Putney, which may have done the PAC more damage than anything.

“My issues are transportation and parking,” says the chair of the city’s transportation and parking committee, “but people are asking me what is going on. They’re disgusted. It reminds them of the days of yore when the city was up for sale. And they’re disgusted.”

The piece says Weithorn is “just too shady for Miami Beach” — and it is flattering to Ladra that David Custin used the very adjective Political Cortadito has used to describe the Relentless for Progress PAC since being the first to expose the extortion for what it is. But the mailer really doesn’t follow through on proving that shadiness. Weithorn said he knows it is just the first of what is likely a barrage of negative attack ads. Although, if this is all they got against him, he shouldn’t be worried about more than that gut.

Meanwhile, Weithorn says, he had nothing to do with a negative piece on Arriola that calls him “Tricky Ricky” and wonders out loud why Arriola waited until few days after the contract with his company, Inktel Direct, was extended for three years. The company provides call center services from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday in both Spanish and English. Don’t know exactly what that entails since Ladra normally calls the city offices direct. Inktel has been providing those services since 2009 and the recent contract is for $200,000 a year.

“Did he purposely wait until his contract was signed before filing to run,” the ad asks. “Did he think we wouldn’t notice? Is this a coincidence? Or is he trying to scam us?”

The ad was paid for by a PAC called Common Sense and Weithorn says it’s a group of mainland people who don’t like the Arriolas from the time when one of the famous Columbus High grad brothers, Joe Arriola, was city manager in Miami (2003 to 2006). Joe Arriola, if you recall, got into hot water when he signed off on an ill-advised and illegal fire fee settlement that paid $7 million to just seven people instead of 80,000 affected property residents — and ended with the suspension of prominent attorney Hank Adorno’s legal license. He was also the subject of an ethics inquiry after the quick-flip land deal in Coconut Grove that he went into with then Mayor Manny Diaz and then Commissioner Johnny Winton — though, unlike those two, he was never fined.

Weithorn agrees, however, that a vendor with a million dollar city contract should not be running for office. So he gave the PAC $5,000 from his website business account.

“This is a huge conflict of interest and the voters shouldn’t stand for it,” he said about Arriola’s contract.

But, hey, apparently Wolfson and Levine are okay with conflicts of interest.

Shady Miami Beach PAC attacks candidate Mark Weithorn added by Ladra on August 25, 2015
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